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Civil Asset Forfeiture: Grading the States

Civil asset forfeiture is a unique area of law in which the government charges specific property of being guilty of wrongdoing, rather than a person. Perhaps because the property is accused of wrongdoing, and not the person, governments often place lower standards of proof needed to forfeit the property. The procedures used by the federal government and many state governments creates grave Fourth and Fifth Amendment concerns.

Since 2008, the federal government has regularly brought in over $1 billion a year in forfeiture proceeds. Although most states lack reporting requirements that would allow us to track forfeiture proceeds, those that do report reveal that states regularly bring in millions of dollars each year.

While civil asset forfeiture has been used as a funding source since our country’s founding, the practice has accelerated at the state and local level since the 1980s. With the creation of new taxes (income, sales, property, corporate) civil asset forfeiture should no longer be needed to raise revenue for governments that have plenty of other revenue streams.

In the wake of rising public outcry against abusive civil asset forfeiture laws, states such as Minnesota, New Mexico, and Montana have led the reform movement, and other states such as California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are in the midst of meaningful discussions about reforms. While this movement is great, more states and the federal government, need to follow their lead and reform their own civil asset forfeiture laws.

With civil asset forfeiture becoming a bigger issue at the state and federal levels, FreedomWorks has released its guide to Grading the States on this important issue. As can be seen by the grades of the states and federal government, there are still plenty of reforms to be implemented before this travesty of justice is corrected.

Nice article... Nearly every state, the District of Columbia and the federal government have civil forfeiture laws, but they differ in their financial incentives and their procedures. This report grades state and federal civil forfeiture laws based on the incentives they create for law enforcement agencies to police for profit and the protections they afford to property owners.

Winston Churchill once said, “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.” The reality that the future is hard to predict, but that has not stopped men and women from trying to do just that. Perhaps one of the best examples of that is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

As technology continues to digitize our daily lives, the urban-rural divide in Internet usage reaps public attention. Despite a decade of improvements between 2007 and 2017, including the near doubling of rural broadband usage from 35% to 63%, rural Americans are still 10% less likely than average to use the Internet. Much of this is attributable to low population density, which makes rural towns less appealing to Internet service providers (ISPs) than customer-packed urban centers. Broadband cable installation over the bare Midwestern and mountainous western expanses is expensive and inefficient. The cable infrastructure for some rural areas is simply too costly.

It may seem surprising to consider licensing reform a criminal justice issue, but if you get to the meat of the issue then it makes sense. Unsurprisingly, barriers to employment make it harder find a job and that can result in those who can find work returning to crime.

Breaking with the Trump administration, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ecently announced that he intends to protect the health insurance company subsidies that had previously been a part of ObamaCare. This is all in line with the Senate Majority Leader’s desire to stabilize the market which he believes is “collapsing” (in large part thanks to ObamaCare). Though reform in this field is absolutely necessary, doling out handouts to well connect insurance companies who helped write the bill are only going to help prevent necessary reform and continue a crony mindset in Washington that needs to go the way of the dinosaur.

Section 702, the controversial aspect of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which allows for mass surveillance of American Citizens, is set to phase out at the end of 2017. Some in congress have introduced measures that would make Section 702, in its current form, permanent law and avoid any reforms which might grant Americans greater privacy protections. Here are 10 reasons why that is an absolutely horrific idea.

The most vulnerable people in America are on the brink of losing their health insurance and messaging from the Left has been consistently silent about addressing the issue, other than somehow blaming it on Republicans. Iowa’s individual healthcare market is hanging in the balance of monumental collapse. The fact is that the so-called “Affordable Care Act” is anything but affordable and has attacked the insurance market by doubling premiums and no one on the Left seems to want to talk about it.

Reports continue to come in about the results of implementing ObamaCare. Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report on the effectuated enrollment, or in other words selected a plan for the first two months of the year and paid their first month’s premium of ObamaCare. The results were admittedly rather surprising as they did not meet the expectations of where the program was supposed to be at this point.

Over the past several decades cars have become increasingly high tech allowing for computers to take larger roles in the routine functions of the car. Computerized functions have been a boon to consumers, who gain greater reliability and efficiently, but it has also increased the vulnerability to criminal hacking.

The Trump White House will seek to boost technology investment with a series of meetings this week. Dubbed as “Tech Week,” the meetings will include Silicon Valley and venture capital heavyweights and will prioritize discussing deregulations that would help investors develop 5g Internet, drone, and “Internet of things” technologies.